Our Girls

Where: Anywhere in our house, or at the gym or in the yard or at church or... basically everywhere When: Pretty much all the time, but this particular time was in late October, 2019 Katie has been working on improving her splits flexibility. Her hard (and painful looking) work is paying off. She ended up getting her full splits on right and left and middle by the end of the fall. For awhile there she was sitting in splits everywhere we went.   

Where: The Center of All Good Things: Quincy, Illinois When: early October 2019 Grammy and Gramps are involved in Quincy's Symphony Chorus, and had heard about a Symphony Orchestra event geared toward kids for the Halloween season. We thought that sounded awesome so Andrew and Molly and Katie headed North for some amazing music and even better company.  Of course costumes were allowed so Katie became Maleficent and Molly became Mal (from Descendants). What a special afternoon with Grammy and Gramps.   

 Where: Soboco Primary When: October 2019 This is Molly's last year at Jessica's school. And so this was our last time getting to go to the Primary Awards ceremony to watch one of the girls receive a classroom honor. Molly was this month's star student! Ms. Catlin had great things to say about our girl - Awesome work Molly! 

 Where: Volleyball courts around MidMo When: Mid-October 2019 Emily continued her foray into volleyball throughout October, and here are a few shots of Em and her teammates.  Little known fact: Volleyball players are best fueled by nacho cheese. Here's Em and one of her best friends.  Later on in the season, we took the Volleyball gang to see the most professional vball players around: The Mizzou VolleyBall Tigers. Point Mizzou!  Katie's friend came along to cheer on the Tigers too.  Eventually the volleyball season wound down, and decked out in Eagles red to see one of the last games was Ba and Papa. 

 Where: Bethel Park, CoMO When: October 13, 2019 One day on one of the last sunny days of the fall, Andrew and Molly were waiting to pick up a sister from dance or gymnastics and so... they decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and go play at Molly's favorite park.  They ran all around the equipment, and up to the tower, and down all the slides, and then even did some climbing on the tires. It was a great evening.  Queen of the Park!

 Where: Downtown Hartsburg, America AND Downtown TigerTown When: October 12, 2019 Sometimes there are days in the lives of a family of five when you have to be in many different places - all at once! Today was one of those days. Andrew woke up early to drive down the curving gravel roads into the river bottoms to deliver Emily to the Hartsburg Pumpkin Festival parade.  It was freezing cold, but the SoBoCo band sounded great. Emily and her classmates did an excellent job marching through the crowd of early festival goers. And then it was time to take a deep breath, rush Emily into the car, drive as fast as the laws of Missouri and physics would allow to get to Columbia in time for the Homecoming parade. Jessica and Molly and Grammy and Gramps and Uncle Chris and Aunt Tracy and Riley were already camped out... somewhere... on the parade route. So Andrew and Emily parked in the first place they found a spot and then RAN across downtown to get to the parade spectators.  Meanw...

 Where: the Soccer fields of MidMo When: October 12, 2019 Molly's soccer season came to an end, and she was a little sad to be putting the cleats away for the winter.  Ba and Papa made it to the season finale, though, so that helped cheer her up! She moved directly from soccer season to ... Costume season?

 Where: Various Locations Around SoBoCo and MidMo When: Various Days in the Life of an Emily in October 2019 This was an eventful fall for Em's final year of Middle School. She decided to try something new and joined the school volleyball team. She learned a lot of basic volleyball skills and had a lot of fun. She ended up getting a lot of playing time and had some memorably good hits. We were so proud of her for being brave enough to try something new and to stick with it (even though she decided at the end of the season that Volleyball was probably not going to be her sport).  And she was back playing her flute in the school marching band! She sounded great, and was always in-step.   In less exciting news, we also found out that she had Sever's Disease, which is a painful musculoskeletal condition in a growing child's heel. She is a growing child and between dance and volleyball and marching and just daily life - she's on her heels a lot! However with a little stra...

 Where: Oh Canada!  When: Sept. 20-22, 2019 Andrew has been wading into the sport of triathlon for about a year now, and he's been loving the challenge. He decided to take on his greatest challenge in the sport yet - a Half Iron distance. He thought "I've run a half marathon before, I've run a full marathon before, I can do this".  And so he decided to make the attempt at the Barrelman Niagara Falls Triathlon. He and Jessica and some good friends decided to make the trip together - without kids! It was like an international getaway - with a triathlon stuck in the middle.  For reference, a Half Iron is a total of 70.3 miles: 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run. We made it to the Great White North! The Falls were beautiful! But what they don't tell you about Niagara Falls is that surrounding this natural wonder is a huge town and commercial development that's as subtle as Vegas and as classy as Branson. We didn't take any photos of that, though, s...

Where: Bach HQ, Ashland, America When: Sept 19, 2019 Katie, as we may have mentioned, is extremely fond of taking selfies. This time Jessica and Jake got in on the action as well!